If there is any comfort to be taken in the trouncing suffered on Tuesday by Albert Curtis, a candidate for the state Senate whom we endorsed, it is that the loss dealt a setback to his ally in that election, Lenora Fulani, and her racial politics. Ms. Fulani, a leftist radical who has remade herself as leader of the Independence Party, issued the following message to the black community of the Senate district in question, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island:

“I’m not asking you to vote for Al Curtis because he’s black,” her campaign flier said. “I’m asking you to vote for Al Curtis because you’re black. Make sure you vote independent to send a strong message that our votes can’t be taken for granted.” Imagine the consequences for the author of a similar sentence in which the word “black” is substituted by with the word “white.”

When, upon being accused by Mr. Curtis’s opponents of “playing the race card,” Ms. Fulani portrayed them as the bigots and had her compatriots in the Independence Party demand an apology. “I’ve been black in America all my life,” she told our Wm. Hammond. “I’m not about to have Diane Savino or the Democratic Party tell me how I can or cannot talk to the black community.”

A more effective way to win African-Americans from the Democratic Party is the issue of school choice. Black parents with children languishing in awful public schools should be reminded again and again that today’s Democrats are too wedded to the narrow interests of the teachers’ unions ever to consider giving those parents a tuition voucher for private schooling. Mr. Curtis earned our support in large part because he made this same point.

The Anti-Defamation League reports that Ms. Fulani once said that Jews “had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism – to function as mass murderers of people of color – in order to keep it.” She also infamously blamed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on “our government’s aggression and arrogance.” Such demagoguery leaves Ms. Fulani a marginalized figure in New York’s public life. Unfortunately, Mr. Curtis is not the only personage who covets the ballot spot labeled “Independence.” Governor Pataki, Senator Schumer, Mayor Bloomberg, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno – all have taken this walk and been cheapened as a result.